Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas. When local cardiologist Mitchell Mutter first began visiting the island in 1988, 25% of the children on the island were starving. After visiting the island on week-long medical missions for seven years working in chaotic conditions with few resources treating as many people as he could, Dr. Mutter reached a crossroads.

Despite the best efforts of Mutter and his colleagues, a 3-year-old child he’d been treating for malnutrition died in his arms. It was at that point he realized that he and his colleagues would never be able to correct the terrible conditions on the island by themselves. After months of agonizing over the problem he decided to form an organization called Children’s Nutrition Program of Haiti so that, as he put it, “Haitians can help Haitians to solve the problems of health, economics, infrastructure, and literacy.”